Genealogy, local history and historical research in New England and other interesting places. Nutfield was the former land grant ................................. that is now the towns of Londonderry, Derry and Windham, New Hampshire.

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Friday, August 9, 2013

Surprise! A Stash of Family Papers has been Discovered!

Sitting in the kitchen with my cousin, checking out
some newly discovered family papers and genealogies

I was visiting my cousin and she showed me a stash of family
papers that were new to both of us, although her Mom had owned them for a long,
long time. We spent a wonderful evening
together poring over the pages, and taking photos of all the documents. My cousin asked me “Don’t you wish you had
these papers 30 years ago when you were starting your genealogy research?” Of course, having these papers would have made
my search easier. However, it was great
to read through them and to see that all my research was correct, and I could corroborate
it with these new charts and reports.

Our biggest delight in this new treasure was wondering who
wrote it! The handwriting was exquisite,
and this mystery ancestor appeared to truly love tracing the family
history. We both would have loved to
have met this person, but he or she probably died one hundred years ago. We spent the night looking at the information
inside the documents, and also trying to identify the mysterious author. There were little family booklets, several scrolls with family group sheets, cemetery deeds, typed reports, and other goodies to read through.

One of the wonderful things about this pile of paper was
that the original author had invented a system of keeping track of each person
in the family, and then this creative system had been adopted by other family
members down the generations. Even my
dear Auntie had adopted this system and used it for my cousin and her
brother. All these papers had been
preserved. I was amazed that an amateur
family historian had come up with this handy little system.

Each family group was in a little booklet, held with a fastener.

The first page was the husband. This is my great grandfather,

with his birth date. Isn't the handwriting wonderful?

On the back of the person's page were his parent's information

The second page was the wife. This is my great grandmother.

I love how the author put her maiden name in the loop of the calligraphy!

There is information here that is not found in the vital records, such as the

time the wedding ceremony took place, and the address.

Each child had his or her own page in the booklet.

This is my grandfather's page. Again, here is information not

found in the vital records, such as his birth weight and time of birth!

If you had never seen an ahnentafel chart report, or a
pedigree chart, what would you have invented to keep track of a large, growing
family? In the days before computers, or the availability of office supply
stores with their plethora of paper, notebooks and supplies, what would you
have used?

This booklet is in my auntie's handwriting. She made this booklet

for her own family. My uncle is the first page...

On the back of his page is his parent's information.

The subsequent pages have his wife, my auntie, and his children, my cousins.

She duplicated the original old book.

There was a multipage typed document outlining the Munroe family

back to the 1600s. We don't know the author of this paper.

It appears to be a carbon paper copy, and is very fragile.

There were several of these rolled up documents. They are made of sheets of

paper taped together, and are also very fragile. This is several generations

of the Munroe family shown in family groups. There are a few names here

that were new to me, and many nicknames (which will be good clues to finding marriages!)

click to enlarge

This is a detail of the top of one of the "scrolls".

It shows the Andrew Munroe (1764-1836) family in the same handwriting

as the little family booklets. Andrew is my 4th great grandfather.

Most of the information is in ink, but then in a different hand the marriages

were added in pencil, which is very faded. Major Andrew Munroe served in the

Revolutionary War, and he was born in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Although we both had asked my aunt about our family history,
and she had shown me many other papers, it was amazing that she had this group
of genealogy charts and reports all this time.
You never know what will show up!
There are still several names on these papers that I have not identified,
so I have my work cut out for me. I’ll
be investigating these this summer, and I hope it leads to some new branches on
the family tree.

Fantastic!! What a wonderful find. Funny how sometimes our family has these things and don't realize what a treasure they are. My dad pulled out the family bible last year and I was thrilled to see it confirmed my research. Have fun mining all those documents!

Karen, yes, I thought I had done all I could with the Munroe family, and now I have several mysterious new names to lookup, as well as finding the identity of the author of these papers. It's always something new in genealogy...

Congratulations on the treasure find! The genealogy gods were certainly smiling down on you. Goes to show that good things really do come to those who wait... notice the word patiently was not in that little diddy? Lovely LEGIBLE handwriting, so nicely organized. I am pretty sure everyone is so envious right now! Enjoy!

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Author of the Nutfield Genealogy blog and occasional genealogy speaker. My family research includes Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, with a smattering of Nova Scotia. Please contact me if you see your ancestors on this blog. I would love to share information. I am the former secretary of the New Hampshire Mayflower Society, former President of the Londonderry Historical Society, member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the Mass. Society of Genealogists, The National Genealogical Society, and the New Hampshire Society of Genealogists.